Our colonial merchants faced the risk of great loss in shipping by sea. But against these losses they had for a time little recourse except insurance in London—where marine insurance was developing rapidly—and that insurance was slow to arrange and uncertain at best because of the uncertainties of communication.

The Minnesota Historical Society has a widely varied collection of business history material, ranging from records of the lumber industry to the papers of Franklin Steele, who developed the St. Anthony Falls water site and was probably the first millionaire in Minnesota.

There seems to be a strong interest at this time in the idea of national organization in the field of economic and industrial history.

As had been announced in The Bulletin, the growth of rigidity in business was the subject of the joint meeting and of the luncheon of the Business Historical Society and the American Economic Association held in Philadelphia on December 29, 1939.

Among the manuscript collections deposited in the Baker Library are the Land Department records of the Burlington and Missouri River Railroad, now part of the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad.

The organized collection of business records at the University of Illinois was begun in November, 1936, when Dean C. M. Thompson and a colleague approached several business houses in the southern part of the State.

During the years after the Napoleonic Wars London merchant bankers, including Baring Brothers and Company, faced new complexities in the management of their business. Among the new problems was to find a satisfactory means of selecting trustworthy correspondents. London had become the leading money center of the world. With that development came a great extension of business for all leading banking and mercantile houses. Old correspondents in all parts of the world increased their operations with “The City” and many new names were added to the lists of correspondents on the books of the Londoners. The relative standing of all these changed from month to month and year to year. Thus, the increasing numbers and the rapidly changing status of the correspondents afforded plentiful evidence that the former haphazard collection of information and the strictly personal knowledge were inadequate for the demands of safety and prudence.

In January the members of the Business Historical Society will receive the Casebook in American Business History, written by N. S. B. Gras and Henrietta M. Larson and published by F. S. Crofts & Company, of New York. This book is presented to the members of the Society by a generous friend of business education.

During the present year has occurred an anniversary of special interest in the history of American business and to the student of business history.

A recent phenomenon in business is the large corporation. The capitalization of the Northern Pacific at $100,000,000 was considered unwise and even fantastic in the 1860's.

Many readers of the Bulletin may be interested in Paul H. Giddens' The Birth of the Oil Industry. The story is concerned chiefly with the events which led to the establishment of the petroleum industry and with its first years as a successful industry, and it traces the rise, prosperity, and decline of one of the most extreme speculative booms the country has ever seen. Large fortunes were made — and lost — in a short time. But the important fact about the book is that it shows how a new industry was built and records the factors which went into its making.